Meta Removes Contract Language That Sparked Web Scraping and AI Training Concerns

Meta has walked back a clause in its commercial terms of use after legal experts warned it could permit the company to scrape publisher websites and use the content to train its AI models.

A "Remarkable Provision"

The controversy centered on an update to Meta's commercial terms, which stated that the company could "use any content from [a business account's] domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of" Meta products and services.

According to legal experts interviewed by Nieman Lab, the language amounted to a "remarkable provision" that could have given Meta permission to scrape the website of any publisher holding a Meta business account and use that content to train its AI models.

The provision surfaced against a broader backdrop of copyright litigation. While Meta defeated a high-profile lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement last year, other cases against AI companies—including Meta—continue to move through the courts.

Meta Pushes Back, Then Reverses Course

A Meta spokesperson initially insisted that the updated terms did not represent a change in how Meta crawls the web. Now, The Verge reports that the provision has been removed entirely.

"We've heard you and want to clarify: the crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products, and we've clarified that in the terms themselves," the company said in a statement. "It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers."

What It Means

The reversal underscores the heightened scrutiny facing AI companies over how they source training data, particularly as publishers and rights holders continue to pursue copyright claims. For now, Meta maintains that its web crawling practices remain unchanged—despite the removal of the language that raised the alarm.

via TechCrunch AI